BUTLER, BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, general of volunteers, U. S. army, was b. at Deer field, N. H., Nov. 5, 1818. He graduated at Waterville college, Maine, in 1838, studied law at Lowell, Mass., where he was admitted to the bar in 1841, and became distin guished as a criminal lawyer and Democratic politician. He was a member of the state legislature in 1853, of the state senate in 1859-60, and a delegate to the Demo cratic national conventions at Charleston and Baltimore in 1860, where lie supported the nomination of Jefferson Davis and John C. Breckenridge, and was nominated as the Democratic candidate for governor of Massachusetts. B. had risen to the rank of brig.gcn. of militia; and at the outbreak of the war of secession, April 17, 1861, he marched with the 8th Massachusetts brigade, and after a check at Great Bethel, was appointed to the command of Baltimore, and subsequently of eastern Virginia, with his head-quarters at fortress Monroe. In Feb., 1862, lie commanded the military forces sent from Boston to Ship island, near the mouth of the Mississippi; and after New Orleans had surrendered to the naval forces under commander Farragut, he held mili tary possession of the city, and by his severity, and especially by an, at least apparently, atrocious order respecting the treatment of women, brought upon himself the intense detestation of the southern people, and a very general feeling of reprobation. Relieved
of his command, he returned to fortress Monroe, acted under gen. Grant in his opera tions against Petersburg and Richmond, and, June 13, 1865, by his refusal to co-oper ate with the naval forces, caused the failure of the first attempt to take fort Fisher, the chief defense of Wilmington. Returning to Massachusetts at the end of the war, lie took an active part in politics as an extreme radical, advocated the impeachment of president Johnson; in 1866, he, was elected member of the house of representatives, and has been repeatedly elected until 1878.